A few months ago I bought a IS250 AWD - planned on running it all year round here in Wisco (awd piece of mind in the winters) - I like the car a lot but thinking about maybe selling it to run a summer winter car.

Here are my options:

1. ) Keep the IS - run it as planned all year until I hit 150k or stuff starts going (have 65k now) - so figure maybe like 5 more years

or

2.) Sell the IS and pickup a early 2000s civic as a daily driver / winter beater and get something else for the summer months (thinking maybe a Z-car)....

Anyone in a similar snowy climate with suggestions / opinions would be appreciated.

I bought a 2005 Mitsu Evo soon after graduating college. (gift to myself, Purdues engineering program kicked my butt for over 4 years). I intended it to be a year round car, especially considering it had all wheel drive. Around the October time frame I decided I wanted to keep the Evo out of the salt, so I went and bought a 95 Integra as a beater. When I bought that car, the Evo had about 25k miles on it. A full six years later, the Evo now only has 31k on it and my daily driver is an IS300.

My point is this, two cars seems like a good idea but you will end up not using that summer car much. (especially if you buy a nicer daily driver down the line) The small added costs are another issue to consider, like plates, oil changes, insurance, tying up garage space or a storage unit, etc. In hind site, I wish I would have just driven the Evo year round, now I have essentially a full size toy car I never drive that I can't get rid of due to the fact I still love it and it's in showroom condition.

This is pretty typical of what I have seen from individuals with two cars, a friend of the family has a Vette that almost never sees the light of day because he bought a Wrx as a daily driver. My advice if you do decide to go with two, buy a really crappy daily driver, it will almost force you to get good use out of the nicer/summer car.

I don't live up north, or anywhere near it for that matter. But, I do understand the thought process of having 2 cars. I have an 08 full size chevy quad cab gas guzzler. I work about 45 minutes away from home and quickly got tired of filling up my tank and breaking the bank for gas twice a week. So, I bought a 98 Civic as my daily driver, and left my truck for weekends and pulling the boat, etc. It's funny, because unless I absolutely need my truck, I drive my Civic 99% of the time now. You just can't go wrong with having a car that easily gets 400-miles on a tank that used to cost less than $30 to fill up (before the gas hike). I don't care if I get a scratch, ding, extra miles, etc., I know the purpose of the car is to take a beating and put a ton of miles on. I paid under $3k for the car and I have already gotten my money's worth out of it. It will just keep paying for itself in the future.

This may not help you out, but I do back the idea of having a nice car, and also a beater you can drive every day and rack the miles up on, especially if you can get over the ego thing. My gf laughs at me and tells me that she would never be able to drive that car every day, lol. One of the best investments I have made to date...

I like the two car scenario, I have a 2005 Subaru STI that has been significantly modified and have recently purchased a 1998 GMC Sierra. In the past 7 weeks I have saved approx 4000 km (In Canada) off of my car. It's always clean, I never have to worry about rock chips or door dings etc. It becomes a treat every time I get to drive my car. Just my two bits.

I have the 2 car scenario. Back in 1999 I had to have a Corvette so I bought my '95 Corvette and then had an S10 as my daily driver and beater. I still have the Corvette but back in 2005 I bought a 2006 Mustang V6 as my daily driver/winter beater for the Denver area. I put some good snow tires on it and it does amazingly well. I have put 80k+ miles on it through 6 winters now and I have only gotten stuck one time and that was last April when I prematurely swapped out the snow tires and we got dumped on here. I also have a crew-cab duramax but my wife drives that because her commute is a LOT shorter than mine.

I presently have two but am contemplating going to 1. When I finished up school, I didn't want to give up my mustang convertible, but my job required me to drive a lot as we covered most of the state of Illinois. I was concerned about putting the miles on the mustang and was also concerned about winter. Id always had rear wheel drive cars, but I'd never had to do much traveling come winter time. My job changed that, as I had to be on the road frequently. All of the comments about the summer car not getting driven much are somewhat true for me. I have put very few miles on the Mustang, but I do drive it 4-5 days per week in the summer. It just rarely leaves town. I'm contemplating going down to one car, as I'm traveling less.

I love the idea of getting great great MPGs (my last civic was 38 mpg) but the IS250 averages about 30 .... so it isn't a HUGE difference. What starts to scare me is that once the Lexus starts to get up there in age and miles the maintenance might get $$$$ --

I loved my civic and have no problem going back to the 2000 and older body style, loved those... may just drive the IS2 for this next summer and pickup a civic come this winter or spring and keep the IS2 as the "nice" car

I think I'm just getting antsy about spending, once I graduate I've got to put away 15k in the next year for a wedding and lord knows after that I won't get to just buy toys when I want.... so I figured get it out of the way now, before she can stop me.